Two published attendance figures
Two attendance numbers are published for this convention. They measure different things.
The Indiana Convention Center forecasts 15,000 for the SHPE National Conference, October 28 to October 31, 2026.
The organiser's own convention site states that the Indiana Convention Center will welcome nearly 10,000 students, professionals, academics, industry leaders and innovators. Its 2025 facts block counts 10,000 attendees, 346 exhibitors and 763 interview booths in Philadelphia.
The venue figure is 1.5 times the organiser's round figure. The venue forecasts. The organiser counts.
Four nights against 7,100 rooms
The venue publishes 7,100 hotel rooms in downtown Indianapolis. The forecast is 2.11 times that stock.
At two occupants per room, 15,000 attendees need 7,500 rooms, or 105.6 percent of downtown. At three per room they need 5,000 rooms, or 70.4 percent. At four per room they need 3,750 rooms, or 52.8 percent.
The same ladders against the organiser's nearly 10,000 give 5,000 rooms at two per room, 3,333 at three and 2,500 at four. Those are 70.4 percent, 46.9 percent and 35.2 percent of the published downtown stock.
The nights are fixed. Wednesday October 28 opens with registration at 6:00 a.m. in Hall F. Attendee registration runs 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. The late registration window closes at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 31.
The skywalk system as the overflow measure
The venue publishes 4,700 rooms connected to the center by skywalk. That is 66.2 percent of the 7,100 downtown rooms.
Those 4,700 rooms hold 9,400 people at two occupants each, or 62.7 percent of the 15,000 forecast. The remaining 5,600 sit outside the connected stock at that occupancy.
Visit Indy publishes a larger connected figure for the same district once the Signia opens. Its page gives 12 hotels and 5,200 rooms connected, and more than 10,000 rooms within walking distance of the convention center.
What the four days leave for daytime inventory
The convention day and the day-use window overlap. Registration opens at 6:00 a.m., the career fair runs to 5:00 p.m. on Friday, and the Saturday fair closes at 4:30 p.m. Day-use inventory is sold in slots that run 6 a.m. to noon, noon to 6 p.m. and 6 p.m. to midnight, so the same property can sell a daytime room without spending one of its 7,100 overnight rooms.
The overnight block sits on the peak side of the week. A Wednesday to Saturday booking covers the three highest-demand midweek nights of a convention week, and the four-night build adds the Tuesday arrival that the block brief asks for.
Where the published rates sit
Engine publishes an Indianapolis par rate of $128 a night across 1.2 million public rate observations from May 2024 to April 2026. Its own definition of a par rate is the cheapest publicly available price at the time of each search, not a negotiated or booked rate. October averages $134 on that basis. February averages $107 and May $158. Indianapolis ranks 39 of 50 markets in the data set, 14 percent below the $148 median.
The organiser publishes nine block rates from $189 to $269, with a median of $214. Four nights cost $756 at the low tier, $856 at the median and $1,076 at the high tier. The median block rate sits 59.7 percent above the October par figure. The two numbers are different measures.
The city's own performance record
Bradford Allen's report of March 19, 2026 carries the Downtown Indy Alliance snapshot, which cites CoStar and STR. Downtown occupancy averages 64.7 percent. Average daily rate averages $209.11. Revenue per available room averages $135.20. The report cites 8.1 million room nights of demand in the 12 months to mid-2025.
Newmark's 4Q 2025 Indianapolis hotel market report gives a metro year-to-date RevPAR change of minus 4.8 percent on Kalibri Labs data, with a RevPAR performance index of 0.914, second of 16 Midwest markets. One figure measures downtown on CoStar and STR. The other measures the metro market on Kalibri Labs.
The housing block closes October 14, 2026. Hotel direct opens October 21, 2026.